April 1, 2010 Session Report

April Fools Day Session, we had nine gamers in attendance tonight, one newcomer to the club (Sulma) along with Doug H, Mike, Greg, Clayton, Tim, Ben, Ding and myself. We played a total of six different games (Gloom, Lost Cities, Can't Stop, Ticket to Ride, Automobile and R-Eco) with two tables in play for most of the time.

Sulma had brought a few games, one of them was Gloom, which several of us had not played before. It's a game with a rather macabre theme where you have bad things happen to your family members, gradually killing them off during the course of the game to score point. Doug and Sulma, who had played before, seemed to be doing well, but it was one of the newbies (Greg) who came through with the win. Final scores: Greg 220, Sulma 105, Mike 100, Doug 65, John 60.

While the Gloom game was going on, Clayton and Tim had arrived and I got them going on Lost Cities, which Tim had not played before. Tim had trouble his first hand, partly my fault for skipping over the rather important rule that you have to play the cards in ascending order. They got in a second hand which was much closer (five point margin), with Clayton coming on top. Ben and Ding arrived and the four of them played Can't Stop, which Ben won.

While the Can't Stop game was still going on, the five of us who were playing Gloom started a game of Automobile. Turned out it took most of the rest of the evening, which was a bit longer than Sulma had planned on, but Clayton took over her position for the final turn. Everyone played fairly conservatively and there were few losses taken in turns one and two, but things changed -- particularly in the final turn when three of us with triple low-cost car factories overproduced. A very tight finish, three of us within 150 and no one really out of it: John 3990, Sulma/Clayton 3890, Greg (who had taken out two loans but had the highest factory value at the end) 3840, Doug 3690, Mike 3240.

The other table got two more games in after finishing with Can't Stop. Ticket to Ride: Ben 138, Ding 95, Tim 93 and Clayton 61. Then, finally, R-Eco, which ended in a tie but a check of the rules found the tiebreaker favored Ben. Scores: Ben and Tim 8, Ding 4, Clayton 2. Thus, a good night for Ben, who went four-for-four and decided to leave with a half-hour left in the session.

Hope to see everyone back next week, as well as some of you who have missed the past few sessions.